


Float

by phipiohsum475



Series: Serial Suicides [12]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Alcohol Abuse, Depression, Gen, Mental Illness, Mentions of neglect, Prescription Drug Abuse, Suicide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-31
Updated: 2015-08-31
Packaged: 2018-04-18 09:41:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,186
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4701302
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/phipiohsum475/pseuds/phipiohsum475
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Everything about him was wrong. Natural selection would have taken him by now, his brain anxious to weed itself from the gene pool. Who was he to argue with evolution?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Float

**Author's Note:**

> TRIGGER WARNING - There is major depression and suicide in this fic. Please don't read if this bothers you. I like you, and I want you to be okay.
> 
> Not betaed nor britpicked. Feel free to (kindly!) point out my errors!

He looked down at the bottles with disdain, gathering the lot of them and dumping them on to the middle of the bed. Mycroft sat down beside them, looking at each, one after the other. 

One for the depression; years of trying to understand others and failing built up. Each one echoed in his brain, the curse of a near faultless memory, each time he’d be ridiculed, shut out, alone. He’d learned over time, of course, how to fake the civilities. How to pretend he was interested, how to act as though he hadn’t been wounded to the core when a colleague announced proudly that his children were so very frightened of Mycroft, that he was able to use Mycroft much as the Puritans used had used damnation to keep their followers in line. 

Caring was a disadvantage. Any sort of connection, any sort of burgeoning empathy with another person was ultimately disastrous. People were cruel, self serving, and unapologetically vicious. Even in their attempts to be kind, their claws did not retract. Sometimes it was only a matter of hours before their true colors emerged, which was considerably better than those who acted superbly, only to betray him when the timing was right, months or years later. 

He’d grown accustomed to it; but the shell he’d built around himself nearly drowned him. He looked at the pills, they were the only thing keeping him afloat. It was a precarious balance; much like trying to cross the Atlantic on a wooden raft. It wasn’t much, but the raft was still better than swimming against the currents and rip tides, sharks nipping at his heels. He tipped the bottle upside down, watching the cascade of pills. 

He picked up another bottle. The life jacket. When he slipped off the raft, he had these. When the fear overcame, the panic, when his heart beat out of control, and his breath came in gasps, he had a life jacket to keep him from drowning. He had perfected the art of appearing outwardly as though he was captaining a cruise ship, even as he struggled, waves crashing over him, to find his way back to the wooden dinghy. 

Christ, he was getting poetic. Disgusting and useless lyricism. He’d once been foolish enough to indulge; a professor had encouraged him, told him that he’d a decent way with words a long time ago. His mother saw through the professor's lies, reminding Mycroft that it was maths and chemistry, science and history that saved the world; that words without import, the words that rendered emotion and imagination were worth little more than a jester’s tool kit.

He wished, some days, that’d he taken the jester’s path in spite of its futility.

He opened the bottle, spilling its contents onto the duvet. He picked up the next one. This one, to organize his thoughts, the sail to his raft; the next bottle, the rudder. He opened each, pouring them out into their own piles. Two more bottles, one to calm the waves at night, the other nothing more than window dressing. 

“Indulgence is an illness of the impotent,” his mother reminded him, with a cheery smile, “Fat as a beached whale, and just as ineffective.”

Which might have been useful, had he not gone hungry for hours on end, waiting for Mummy  to take a break in her work feed him. When he’d begun to fetch his own meals at four, she’d disciplined him sternly. He’d learned to eat all he could when he was able, and that in a pinch, sugar quelled his appetite. 

And so he tipped the bottle out, this time letting the pills fall into the other piles, then running his fingers through them. The capsules and tablets, the greens and reds and blues and yellows, each one a reminder of his deficiencies. How wrong he was, how faulty. This wasn’t high blood pressure, nor juvenile diabetes. This was everything at his core. Everything about him was wrong. Natural selection would have taken him by now, his brain anxious to weed itself from the gene pool. Who was he to argue with evolution?

He envied Sherlock, envied the way that the very traits that were medicated, corrected and beaten into submission in his own life were encouraged and nurtured in Sherlock’s. He supposed it was the fundamental differences, that he, as a whole, was worth less than his brother. A disruption in his mother’s studies, a project his father attempted to bumble through, only to be met with exasperation as his mother sternly corrected them both. He was an embarrassment, a burden, a failed experiment they continuously tried to repair by submerging him in chemicals. 

He was tired being an abomination, a nuisance, his very presence like venom, toxic, needing constant treatment. He’d done his research and drafted his plan. He’d abandoned the raft weeks ago, knowing the anti-depressants kept him from doing what was necessary. He’d kept on taking the stimulants, they kept him sharp, able to filter and sort the information that crashed over him. As he began to drown, they showed him how to make fast work of the situation. Just because he accepted that his life was not worth the energy expended to keep him alive, did not mean he wished to suffer in the meanwhile. 

He also knew that the longer the duration between the execution and completion of his plan, the greater the likelihood that the survival instinct would kick in and ruin his well laid designs. The timing could not have been more perfect. His parents were out of town, and not available to lecture him on the purchase of such a fine bottle of brandy. The clerk at the store simply check his ID and laughed, commenting only on how long he must have saved, to buy such a brand the first day on which he was legally able. 

Sherlock was home, but the staff were not. There truly was no one better to discover him. Sherlock held no affection or regard for him. He’d enter the room with little more than academic intrigue, call the police, then continue on his way, experimenting in his bedroom, or even perhaps experimenting on Mycroft’s body until the mortician came to haul away the even more useless vessel of his mangled mind. 

The raft had been gone for some time, and so he tipped back the first handful of pills; to offer his mind the false assurance that he was safe and afloat. He washed it down with the bitter burn of the brandy, but was able to keep it all down; the smoothness of the liquor was just as he was promised. He took down another handful; to calm the ocean, lulling him to sleep. Then he drank as much as the brandy as he was able, letting himself sink comfortably underwater. He curled in amongst the remaining pills, finding comfort in the cool night air drifting in from the window and the silk of his pajamas. 

And as he fell to sleep, he felt, for once, that he was doing something right. 

**Author's Note:**

> I'm on [Tumblr](http://phipiohsum475.tumblr.com).


End file.
